5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Misogynistic Hate Site

Not that long ago, an 18-year-old student named Carly, appalled by the rampant misogyny on display at A Voice for Men, sent a critical but thoughtful email to a number of the men associated with the site challenging them to rise above their hatred of women.

AVFM “Managing Editor” Dean Esmay decided to take her email as an opportunity to reach out to all the Carlys out there in the world in an attempt to win them over to AVFM’s peculiar brand of “human rights activism,” penning what he called an

open letter … not just to you, but to any young woman who has an open mind and is willing to be challenged on her prejudices.

Naturally, given that Men’s Rights Activists are some of the most verbose douchebags in history, it was long as hell — some 3000 words. But Esmay’s diplomatically worded attempt at outreach didn’t go quite as well as he might have hoped. Carly responded with a note saying that his open letter had merely

reinforced everything I believe. It seems we are at a stalemate, you will never agree with me, and I will never agree with you.

So where might poor Dean Esmay might have gone wrong in his attempt to win Carly’s heart and mind?

Let’s start here, with 5 Arguments Least Likely To Convince A Young Woman That A Voice for Men Isn’t a Woman-Hating Piece of Shit Hate Site, in the form of direct quotes from The Esmay himself. Since Esmay is so long-winded, I’ve highlighted some of my favorite bits in bold.

1)“[Y]ou’re 18, and so, not to put too fine a point on it, you are still a young skull full of mush.”

2) “[M]en have few to no voices speaking about issues that are specific to men, or defending men as a group, in this society. Until very recently in history men never have had such a voice. Because pretty much all civilizations for the last few thousand years have prioritized the needs and desires of women over those of men. For hundreds, even thousands, of years.

3)“If you believe men have silenced women for thousands of years … you believe something that just not true. … Furthermore, if you believe that, what you have to believe is that Asian men have been oppressing Asian women for thousands of years, black men have been oppressing black women for thousands of years, European men, Australasian men, and so on, have all been oppressing their women for thousands of years. And those weak women could do nothing about it. So what you believe here isn’t just wrong, it’s racist.”

4) “For most of history, being female was a privilege. It carried certain special rights that only applied to women, and special responsibilities that only applied to women, and through most of history, being male was a burden, a burden which carried certain rights that only applied to men, and those rights were there mostly so they could discharge their duties to women properly.”

5)“[Y]ou may occasionally see angry remarks or articles on this site. What I would hope you would do with that, when you do see it, is contemplate that there is a difference between righteous anger at real injustice, and what you seem to have misinterpreted as hate.”

The funniest thing about Esmay’s “open letter” is that this bizarre crackpottery, easily seen through by anyone with any knowledge of history or sociology or, hell, the real world, is his attempt to sound as reasonable as possible. He’s reined in the wild conspiratorial ranting he often indulges in when arguing with ideological foes; he’s avoided the misogynistic slurs (cunt, bitch, whore) favored by other AVFMers like Paul Elam and Diana Davison. And this is the best he can manage.

The Men’s “Human Rights” Movement isn’t ready for its close-up. And I suspect that it never will be.

EDITED TO ADD: A commenter has pointed out another quote I should have included as well. So here is BONUS EXTRA LEAST CONVINCING DEAN ESMAY ARGUMENT NUMBER SIX:

6) “The truth is, the most privileged class of people in the whole wide world are young women living in places like the US, UK, Canada, etc.–and if you want to be treated like an equal, you should not flinch or cry like a little girl if someone tells you that.“

Comments

Thank you for your understanding and insight. I saw your comments in regards what I said about Dean and the hateful reaction to some of the users around here towards me.

Though I hesitated to come back here to see the follow-up I would get, yet I wanted to see what you had to say about it all — if anything. I’m glad you see things as they are, not as others want to see it.

I won’t comment to those 3 users anymore. It’s obvious to me that they want to take much of what I say and twist it to suit their narrative. Now they’re labelling me as some kind of self-righteous feminist who is trying to help everyone. Yet everyone who knows me knows that’s not the case. There are those I just criticize because I know they’re beyond repair or just enjoy their misogyny too much.

Though I’m glad you allow the community here to be themselves, with fewer restrictions than other sites. Yet I was surprised that my ‘cat’ joke got the negative attention that it did. Looking back on it, I wonder now if such users were more offended by the possibility that I was some MRA troll, rather than what I said. Having read what others said and hearing how you had to ban repeated offenders, I sometimes forget how sites such as this often get infiltrated by anti-fem/anti-women cockroaches. And so people can be sensitive about such things, quick to judge. But that wasn’t the first time I commented here. I thought the community here knew me well enough, understood my sense of humor, that they wouldn’t take what I said out of context. Yet as it turned out, they did.

But that’s all I’ll say about that. I know you want to bury this, but I just had to clear up some things. I won’t bring this up again.

(Also, you may notice my email address here is different. It’s because I lost the password/security info, hence created this new one just recently).

Yes, Sael. This is me, Felisha1717 (from youtube). I would’ve responded to you on my YT channel to confirm that, but google closed out my Inbox. It’s part of the punishment for not integrating to their g+, lol.

gillyrosebee – I agree with LBT’s comments here. Why should complex ideas require being described in impenetrable jargon? That does exclude people who haven’t had a university education in that field. Nothing to do with the intelligence of the reader, either, any more than someone is less intelligent if they’ve never learned a foreign language. It’s one thing if it’s a textbook only aimed at that small academic group, but if the writer has the slightest notion of talking to a wider audience – like LBT said, the ones affected by these issues – then they have an obligation to actually communicate.

Well, to be fair, some books actually aren’t aimed at anyone outside academia. It’s when a. they are aimed a more general audience and they’re still jargon fests or b. there really is a more straightforward way to say the things that are being said and the person has chosen not to do things that way that I get irritable.

I hesitated to post this, but it just further goes to show how deranged Dean is getting. I hope he has a good reason to mock Naomi Wolf like this. At the moment, I can’t think of any. Though I figure Dean did this to uplift Karen for making a fool of herself during the interview.

Naomi Wolf is more of a conspiracy theorist than a feminist these days, but, frankly, having read the transcript of her encounter with GWW, every single one of her reactions there was perfectly justified. Those are just the reactions of a person living in the real world when confronted by someone like GWW babbling reactionary nonsense. Having never encountered her before, it just took Wolf a little while to realize how completely delusional GWW really is. .

Well I don’t know what Naomi is doing to suspect conspiracy theorists. She has mention how America is turning into a police state, and given her experience protesting they do seem legit. Paranoia has gripped our gov since 911 and it seems it’s more their problem than it is a civilian issue.

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.